It is a football video with no football, no footballers and no match action in it.

Yet there is something about our reporter Mike Fuller’s footage of a foggy St James’ Park on matchday that has captured the imagination of not just Newcastle supporters, but the wider football world.

At the last count, it had been retweeted more than 5,000 times and ‘liked’ by almost 14,000. 360,000 people watched the video on our Facebook page and on Monday morning, Alan Shearer got in on the act – sharing it with his 600,000 followers. It’s the most-watched video I can remember the Chronicle ever producing.

If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a a still camera set up to overlook the stadium from behind the East Stand. The Leazes stand juts into the picture from the right; the Gallowgate’s cantilevers dominate the terraced houses in the foregone. The video runs for nearly two minutes from kick-off, smoke chugging from the row of terraced houses, traffic turning towards Strawberry Place as the match kicks off. The grey fog of a late winter’s day adds to the atmospheric setting.

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And then 60 seconds in, there’s an excited roar. You can’t see it in the footage but Jonjo Shelvey has found Kenedy with a perfect, raking pass. Seven seconds later, the ball’s in the net, Kenedy’s wheeling away and the noise is cacophonous. You can’t see any of the action, yet the noise of the supporters conveys it perfectly.

I think that’s why it has captured the imagination. For a start, people who love football – and Newcastle United – rarely, if ever, get an idea of what the stadium sounds like from the outside on match day. And the answer, it transpires, is pretty damned great.

It’s also a nice reminder that fans make the game. It was Celtic’s late, great manager Jock Stein who famously said “Without fans, football is nothing” - a phrase adopted by supporters who campaign for more care to be taken in how fans are treated. In an era when kick-off times are moved for TV wantonly, when clubs talk incessantly about profit margins and a schism has opened up between supporters and those who play it, here’s some visual evidence that the fans are the game, really. Kenedy’s goal was a thing of beauty, but so was the atmosphere at St James’ Park.

There’s also something very specific to St James’ Park about it. The stadium is one of the very few city centre venues left. Other Premier League grounds are on the outskirts of their town or city or purpose-built in retail parks but Newcastle’s dominates the city. It’s something unique to the Magpies that we rightly cherish.

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Rival fans rightly ask why Newcastle United – with no major trophies for half a century, a team that has struggled to be relevant in the Premier League era and has none of the world class stars of its rivals – think of themselves as a ‘big club’. The video illustrates its greatest asset: a club at the heartbeat of its city, loyally and fiercely backed by its supporters. Even in these days of state-backed football clubs that can blow Newcastle out of the water, it’s a currency that feels like it means something.

Newcastle United themselves retweeted the footage on Sunday and it’d be nice to think that they might show it in any pitch to players who are interested in signing for them – to give them an idea of what Newcastle can offer. So too, interested investors in the club – who might watch it and realise Newcastle’s potential.